


Of All Places

by Seal9



Series: Second Chance [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, Leonard Snart Lives, Trapped In A Closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 04:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seal9/pseuds/Seal9
Summary: Since Leonard's return, the former crook and assassin haven't been on the friendliest of terms. When Sara's plan for retrieving a document from a Nazi base goes wrong, the pair find themselves trapped in a storage closet of all places. Neither of them wanted this.





	Of All Places

**Author's Note:**

> Had this idea for months, but I didn't decide to write it until I got fed up with assignments and textbooks. 
> 
> If you recognise the first line, then I'm pleased to see another fan.

“ _Trust me_ , she says. _We’ll be in and out in five minutes_ , she says. We’ve been in here an hour,” Leonard growls through gritted teeth. 

“Shut up,” Sara snaps back in a hushed whisper, keeping her eye trained through the slits on the door, “It’s only been 40 minutes.”

An ‘hour’ is a dreadfully long time to spend in a storage closet. A boring grey room with various stationary equipment and bundles of white paper packed to maximum capacity on the metal shelves that line the walls. By her leg, a few cardboard boxes are stacked one on top of the other, covered in German text that she can only partially understand. 

Sara supposes she should be grateful that there’s enough room for them to avoid feeling cramped or requiring them to be pressed against each other just to make room. There was a time, before the Oculus, where she would have enjoyed the close proximity with the former crook. Might have even had a few fantasies of situations similar to this. Now, such thoughts fill her head with conflicting emotions. 

From behind her, Leonard growls and she hears the rustling of wooden objects before the distinct sound of wood snapping. 

It happens two more times, slightly muffled, before Sara finally looks over her shoulder, “What the hell are you doing?”

Normally, the look on her face is enough to stop a person in their tracks, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Much to her frustration, as she’s learnt recently, Leonard seems to be immune. 

By the wood and lead chippings on the shelf beside him, Sara realises he’s breaking the tips of the pencils that he’s taking from the container by his shoulder. 

“Making my contribution to the war effort,” Leonard drawls as he pulls out an inch of the lead rod from the pencil and snaps it between his fingers, the two halves falling to the floor.  
Sara rolls her eyes, “I’m sure the Allies really appreciate you taking out the enemy’s stationery supplies,” she adds sarcastically. 

Turning her attention back to the slits in the door, Sara watches the two Nazi generals across the room talking over a few documents at the far desk.

One of those documents is the source of the Legend’s latest anachronism. Gideon had detected a change in the course of the Second World War that, while not giving Germany the victory per se, allowed them to enact some mutual destruction on the other significant nations. All it took was a few changes in battle plans and troop deployment to cause mass destruction. 

Obviously, that couldn’t be allowed to happen, hence their mission to retrieve said documents before the Nazis can follow through with them. 

“Are they still there?” Leonard snaps his forth pencil, muffling the sound with his parka.  
“Yes,” Sara responds sharply.  
Leonard puts the pencil back with the others, “Come on, Lance, let’s just kill them already.”  
Sara rolls her eyes again, “As much as I like killing Nazis, history needs the bad guys alive in this moment. And we don’t kill anymore.”

Leonard doesn’t pick up another pencil and simply crosses his arms while staring intently past Sara’s shoulder, “Fine. Knock them out then. We can handle them.”  
“Sure,” Sara exaggerates sarcastically, “And then the Nazis will realise that someone was in their base and tampered with their files, which I’m certain won’t have any negative impact on history.”

Somehow, she can practically feel Leonard sulking behind her. Her suspicions are confirmed when she hears rummaging and the snap of another pencil tip. 

“What is up with you?” Sara turns her head slightly, “You’re a thief. Exercise some bloody patience.”

Leonard puts the pencil back, picks up a stapler and empties the staples onto one of the shelves in a matter of seconds, “Let’s just say I don’t like wasting my second chance in life.”

Sara scoffs with something of amusement. Is that what it is? Explains a lot.

Clearly, her reaction doesn’t go unnoticed by Leonard, because he returns the now empty stapler to the shelf with a bit more force, “What’s that supposed to mean.”  
“Nothing,” Sara responds immediately, the emotions on her face completely obscured from Leonard’s perspective. 

He sighs loudly. Something he tends to do often now, which she’s certain wasn’t the case before the Oculus. 

“I don’t get it, Canary,” something tells her that Leonard had probably done some overdramatic gesture, “You’ve died, and yet you don’t mind wasting your time in a storage closet? Wouldn’t you rather be doing other things with your second chance in life?”

“Third chance, actually.” 

It’s just a fleeting thought, barely lasting a second, but she wonders if that’s actually something she’s meant to sound smug about. Good thing Leonard can’t see how quickly her expression falters. 

“And I can think of hundreds of things I’d rather be doing than being stuck in a closet with you, but I’m not complaining just because this feels like a waste of time. We’re saving history,” Sara grits through her teeth, “I would think you’d understand that by now.”

“Oh, I understand it clearly, Lance,” Leonard drawls at her back mockingly, “I just wish you let me come up with this plan so we wouldn’t be stuck here for a fucking hour.”  
“It’s only been 40 minutes,” Sara repeats frustratedly, willing herself to not turn around punch him, “Did the Oculus screw up your perception of time too?”

His sharp exhale is close behind her. Sara detects Leonard stepping back and press up against one of the metal shelves, hearing it creak and groan softly under his weight. 

“I’m going to check in with Gideon,” Leonard announces as he lifts his hand to his ear.  
“Of course you will.”

It slips out of her mouth before she realises the amount of spite there was in her voice. She frowns at her carelessness. 

Leonard’s hand stops just by his cheek and his eyebrows raise incredulously, “Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Sara doesn’t respond, distracting herself with looking through the slits in the door and viewing the two generals. Yep. Still there. 

“Hey,” Leonard grits through his teeth, “What the hell’s your problem?”

“Nothing,” Sara responds, looking down at her feet.

Leonard must be staring at the back of her skull because the hairs on her neck rise.

A few moments later, Sara concedes, “You and Gideon just seem to be talking a lot recently.”

Oh, how she tries extraordinarily hard to ensure there’s as little jealousy in her tone as possible. Her attempt is admirable, truly. When she realises those thoughts in her head, it only makes her frown more intensely. She shouldn’t be feeling jealous. Jealousy is such a petty mindset.

She’s not jealous. Not at all. 

“Yeah,” Leonard confirms, “So?”

Out of everything that could be bugging her right now, hey greatest annoyance comes from the fact she’s disappointed that she received an admission, and not a denial. She’s meant to be over this, so why the hell doesn’t it feel like it?

He continues, “You were the one who told me that Gideon is the best person on the ship to go for information about what’s changed.”

Okay, she has to admit he’s not wrong about that, “Yeah, well, I didn’t say…” Sara feels Leonard’s icy eyes drilling into her back as he waits for what she has to say, “Whatever. Forget it. You can do what you want.”

She was going to say that she thinks it’s more than just that. Because it clearly is more than just that. In the month and a half that Leonard has been back, Sara has seen him getting close with the artificial superintelligence in an android body. They talk plenty throughout the day, and oftentimes she’ll find them sitting in the galley during lunch, Leonard eating at the counter with Gideon opposite him, giggling at his jokes when he talks to the others on the team, or just being completely entranced by whatever else he has to say. Sara would find it cute, adorable even, only if it wasn’t Leonard.

For the first week, she could rationalise that he was simply doing exactly as she recommended to him. And then it continued for the second week, and then the third, and then it didn’t stop. The pair of them had clicked, or something, and a friendship blossomed between the crook and the ASI. Sometimes it feels like Gideon is more on Leonard’s side than Sara’s, and that most certainly strikes a jealous chord within her. 

In contrast, Leonard and Sara have been continuously getting further and further apart, in terms of friendliness. On their mission against Savage, sarcastic banter was common for them, but there was always a friendly undertone. As the others on the team are unfortunately familiar with as of late, communication between the former crook and assassin is done solely in sarcastic jabs, snide remarks, and stubborn arguments. Nobody has heard them say a nice thing to each other since his return. Even Constantine is concerned that lighting a cigarette might be the spark that sets off the powder keg. 

To convince Leonard on this mission was a huge pain in the first place, and it doesn’t help that the plan she assured him would work soundly, has backfired and gotten them stuck in a storage closet. He’s not going to shut up about this when they get back. 

In the meantime, Leonard racks his brain as he stares at Sara’s back, trying to figure out what she’s insinuating with comments like that. After about five minutes of tense silence, it finally clicks. 

“Oh, come on,” Leonard rolls his head back and stares at the roof, “Seriously? You think Gideon and I are hooking up?”

For about 10 seconds, there’s silence. 

“You’re not?” for the first time in the last 50 minutes, Sara turns around.

Leonard looks down at her and shakes his head, “No,” he says firmly, then raises his hands defensively, “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Gideon is hot and I’m sure the sex would be great-”

If they were discussing this in different circumstances, Sara might openly admit that she shares the same sentiments as Leonard. But in this circumstance, where she’s frustrated with Leonard and hiding in a storage closet in a Nazi base, now might not be the appropriate time to compare their sexual attraction to the ship’s ASI. 

“-but it’s not happening, and there’s no intention of changing that.”

Sara restrains herself from visibly showing her relief. Just how much willpower was necessary to do so makes her body tense. It shouldn’t feel so relieving, and yet, that’s exactly what she feels. Dangerous thoughts, ones she believed she had moved past, resurface in her head.

“You just,” Sara fumbles with her words in a quiet whisper, “You two are _always_ together whenever I see you on the ship. I, I kinda assumed.”

She looks up to see something between humour and sympathy on his face. 

“Do you know how the nuclear fusion of a supernova was able to be perpetually sustained within a chamber and how that energy was able to be converted into a temporal device capable of manipulating the very time stream using calculations derived from the most advanced super-computer in all of existence?” Leonard drawls casually as if he were asking her about the weather report. 

Sara scoffs and tries to put on a confident face, but each time she looks up into his icy eyes, her resolve weakens, and she sighs in defeat, “No.”

“Well Gideon can,” Leonard continues in a whisper, “The Oculus told me a lot of things when it had me working for it, and not even Raymond understands half of what I now know. Imagine how clueless the boy scout was when I tried explaining how ring-shaped pieces of tech are able to tap into the emotional spectrum and convert it into transmutable energy. Gideon’s the only person on the Waverider who can make sense of what I say.”

In one way, she’s relieved to hear that they’re just good friends. She might even admit that it’s kind of cute when she thinks about it like that. In another way, she now envies Gideon’s knowledge and capacity for learning and understanding. 

God, she feels so petty right now.

Sara is silent, looks up at Leonard, only to briefly nod and turn her back to him and look through the slits. The two generals are still talking on the other side of the room, and she’s thankful that they didn’t hear anything coming from herself and Leonard. 

“I have to ask,” Sara whispers, “What exactly happened between you and the Oculus? You wanted to blow it up, but ever since you’ve come back, you talk about it like it’s your best friend.”  
Leonard lets out an amused huff, “It is. When you’re travelling through space and time for as long as I was, trying to hold onto the hate you have for the one being you have to live with can get quite tiring. Eventually, I just stopped hating it and started accepting it for what it is. When you get the past the pushiness and the ego, the Oculus can be pretty good company.”

Sara shakes her head in disbelief. She’s seen and heard some interesting and crazy things on the ship and throughout her travels: magic fluffy orgies, Jesus Christ, dystopian cult fanatics and reality shifters. But what almost sounds like some buddy cop road trip throughout time and space starring Leonard and the Oculus, is up there with some of the more insane things she’s heard. She can’t even begin to imagine what that would be like. 

“It was weird at first,” Leonard continues a minute or so later, “It’s an ASI like Gideon, but it lacks a body, so it communicated with me through mental projections of people I knew. Took a while before we finally agreed on a persona.”

Curious about the possibilities, Sara turns to him, “Who did it show you?”  
Leonard avoids her gaze for some time, a deep in thought expression on his face as his fingers strum on the stack of papers beside him, “My father first. That was a hard pass. Then Mick, but that didn’t last long either,” he shrugs, almost looking nonchalant about it, “It doesn’t really matter.”

Sara almost feels the need to push the topic and learn the names of the faces that the Oculus showed him, but the reserved look on his face indicates to her that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, or at least to her about it. When he looks away, she turns around to the door. 

Silence fills the small storage closet until she hears the rummaging of pencils and snapping of lead. It goes on for a few minutes, just standing there idly passing the time. It occurs to her, that this might have been the first proper and sustained conversation she’s had with him since his return. 

“Did I do something to make you hate me?” Leonard asks at a later point.  
Sara’s frowns slightly at the door, “You think I hate you?”  
She can’t see Leonard shrug behind her, but he does, “I can’t seem to remember a time since I got back when we haven’t been arguing or showing any other kind of disdain for each other.”

Sara sighs a deep breath, “I have never hated you.”  
“But you clearly don’t like me,” Leonard drawls. 

It takes a while for Sara to respond, “I don’t know what I feel.”

“Is that why you were so quick to push me away and never talk to me?” Leonard’s voice feels closer, but maybe it’s just her imagination. 

She could argue that he’s wrong, but then she’d be arguing a lie, because that’s exactly what she was doing. 

Sara nods, knowing that Leonard’s eyes are trained on her back. 

“Is it because you thought I was sleeping with Gideon?”

Sara shrugs. It’s part of the reason. At the minimum, it was a contributing factor.

“Is it because of Ava?”

Sara straightens her back at the mention of the other women, “Why do you think that?” her tone full of genuine curiosity.

They’re both aware that she hasn’t denied it.

“She’s the opposite of everything I stand for,” Leonard explains, “I’m the criminal, she’s the government agent. I’m the rule breaker, she’s the rule maker. I’m the unruly arsehole you sneak around with behind your parent’s back, and she’s the perfect girlfriend you show off and bring home for family dinners.”

Sara stands in silence as she lets his words process through her mind. Deep down, the comparison doesn’t really surprise her, and she almost thinks that there was a subconscious part of her that had been aware of such a great distinction between the two. 

Leonard continues, “Figured that since you started dating someone who couldn’t be more different from I, you couldn’t stand to have anything remind you of me,” he pauses for a moment, and she feels him take a step closer, “Though, I see you still wear the ring.”

Those words set the nerves in her finger under the metal band alight, burning just enough to be an uncomfortable reminder of its presence. But as uncomfortable as it feels right now to be reminded of its significance, she wouldn’t dare take it off. It’s become part of her, and without it, she wouldn’t feel whole. 

“It wasn’t because of that,” Sara promises, “I did like her for who she was. Not because she was different from you.”

“So why avoid me so much at first? It felt like you couldn’t push me in the direction of anybody else fast enough.”

Whether he intends it or not, the faint hurt in his voice tears at her heart and makes her wince. It was so much easier to think that he didn’t care about how she had been acting, but she should have realised nothing is that simple or easy to believe. 

“Because I didn’t want you asking me questions,” Sara admits, “About us.”

Sara turns around and stares at him, examining the way his brows furrow in concentration, letting her know she has his full attention now.

She sighs before continuing, “I was still trying to understand what exactly happened to you, whether you changed or were the same. I couldn’t be sure if you had time to move on, or if what happened between us was still fresh in your mind. It meant that I needed to reassess things in my own head, but by the time I finally felt ready, you and Gideon just seemed so close. I realised I had done the same stupid thing as last time by pushing you away, only this time, it was before I could even give you a chance.”

Sara stares down at her hands, “I was just so mad at myself, and I’ve been projecting it onto you. I’m sorry. I should have been a better friend when you came back.”

Leonard presses his lips in a firm line and leans back against one of the shelves. They stare at each other for a time, who knows how long, and Leonard is the first to break the silence.

His laugh is purposefully quiet and short, “We’re such fucking losers.”

Normally, her resolve and strength to refrain from laughing at his statements is higher, but she feels like she needs to laugh now, or she’ll burst. It’s only fortunate that she’s mindful enough to remember where they are, so her laugh is as quiet as his. 

“Rip wouldn’t have recruited us if we weren’t,” Sara responds, looking up to meet his eyes. 

For the first time in the storage room, the silence that hangs between them isn’t awkward. Nothing like self-deprecating humour to share half-smirks over. Sara looks down from his eyes and takes a good look at him, letting her eyes roam across his body, trailing down one arm, and then the other. Except, something, or more accurately the lack of something, catches her eye as her examination stops by his hand. 

“The line on your wrist, it’s gone,” she observes, looking at where she remembers his hand had shattered off.  
“It never happened,” Leonard answers casually, looking at his wrist like one might look at their nails after a manicure. 

Sara stares up at him inquisitively, trying to determine if she heard him right. Never happened? Of course it happened, she saw it. She remembers asking how it felt when he came out of the medbay. 

Leonard’s smirk grows larger, “When I died, the Oculus put me in an older body. 2004 me to be precise. Said that I was at my physical best during that year. Which means that my body never needed to escape those pesky cuffs. Only reason I look the same is because the Oculus aged me before it let me return,” he adds in response to the narrowed look she gives him. 

Leonard’s shoulders pop as he rolls them, a brief flash of disappointment on his face, “It was nice to feel young again.”

Well, that’s interesting to say the least. Sara almost begins to wonder what the Oculus would have considered her physical peak condition. Would it bring her back before her death, or after? And would she have the bloodlust, something she hasn’t suffered in years? Deciding that dwelling on something that’s not going to matter, she pushes those thoughts away and focuses her attention elsewhere. 

Turning back to the door, Sara peers through the slit and takes another look at the two generals. She can barely make out what they’re saying, but she notices one of them yawning as he listens to the other. Hopefully, they’ll both tire out soon and leave. Even Sara’s got to admit she’s getting a bit restless, stuck in this closet. Doesn’t help that a resurgence of past emotions and desires have come back to her now that she’s finally beginning to open up to Leonard. 

In particular, one question keeps nagging in the back of her head, trying to push it way forwards and escape her mouth. She doesn’t want to ask it, afraid of the answer he might give the possible rejection she’ll feel because of it, and yet she knows it will keep eating at her every moment she holds off on asking it. 

“Were you ever going to ask me?” her voice is almost too quiet for Leonard to hear.  
“About us?” he asks for confirmation. 

Sara nods, looking at the door handle distractedly. 

Leonard sighs and doesn’t answer for a few seconds, “I considered it, until you kept avoiding me and I learnt about your Ava. Got the impression you didn’t want me, let alone an us, so I didn’t want to waste your time.”

“I wish you did ask me,” Sara admits, “I mean, I wish I gave you the chance,” she corrects herself. 

For the first time in just under an hour, there’s contact between them. Leonard’s large hand gently lands on Sara’s shoulder.

“No,” he says, “It wouldn’t have been a good idea.”

She doesn’t realise she had been slouching until her back straightens in response to his statement. As soon as he retracts his hand, Sara turns around to look at him. She looks for any sign that he was joking, but she finds none. 

Had she really blown it by pushing him away?

“It would have been selfish of me to bring it up so soon after my return,” the solemn words catch her off-guard, “You needed the time to think, and I needed the time to get used to things again. Seeing you, the real you, after so long wasn’t something I was going to adjust to easily. We both needed time, even if it was spent arguing with each other.”

To see Leonard so conscious and, dare she think it, responsible, almost makes her swoon over his words. Though it does not surprise her how considerate and thoughtful he is, because something in her gut tells that there was always this side of Leonard behind the sarcastic and witty banter. 

“And what about now?” a flicker of hope arises inside her. 

Leonard frowns, eyes momentarily flicking from down at her to the door and then back, “You want to talk about it now? Here of all places?”

Sara nods. 

Why not? They’ve come this far already.

Leonard steps back and visibly swallows as a concentrated look takes over his entire face. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting to discuss it right here and now, but Sara doesn’t think she could stay sane if they didn’t finally discuss how they felt. They’ve ignored this for too long. 

He fidgets with his fingers along the edge of one the shelves, something she realises hasn’t changed about him. 

Eventually, words come to him, “I had a lot of time to consider what I wanted with my second chance in life. A lot of time to regret wasting the opportunities I had. I saw hundreds of possibilities and future timelines that I could have, but the only ones I was ever interested in were the ones with you in them. Sometimes we worked out, sometimes we didn’t, but this is now, and I’m willing to let us write our own future.”

“Our own future,” Sara repeats his words in a whisper, her heart pounding in her chest, “You still want that? After how I acted? I expect you to hate me,” surprise lacing her quiet voice.  
Leonard raises an eyebrow, “Like I expected you to hate me?”

Sara looks at him, an expression of understanding passing over her face. 

“Me and you, wherever, or whenever, it takes us,” his words are the loudest thing to her ears, resonating and repeating in her head as her mind flickers between memories of her bedroom on the Waverider all those years ago, to here and now. 

Sara smiles warmly, her feet inching closer to him, “Our own future. I’d like that.”

Anticipation builds in Sara’s body as she closes the gap to Leonard, lifting up on her toes. Her hand lifts up to brush against his cheek, fingers sliding across the bristles of hair behind his ear. One hand of his lands on her waist, the touch causing a heated sensation to rise inside her, combining itself with the anticipation of more. Her mind goes into a frenzied overdrive of thoughts and possibilities, imagining various ways she wants to take him here and now, living out every fantasy her mind has conjured. 

Just as Leonard lowers his head down and their lips are upon each other, a loud slam causes them both to jump, spiking their heart rates as adrenaline begins coursing through their bodies. Both heads snap with hasty attention to the metal door, a fear on their face akin to being walked in on while committing the act. However, much their great relief, the black metal door remains closed. 

The mental strength required to peel herself away from Leonard is greater than she’d like to admit, though nevertheless, Sara approaches the door and peers through the open slits and into the room. 

“They’re gone,” she whispers, her hand going to the door handle.  
“Give them a minute,” Leonard warns cautiously, “I got caught one time when I was young because the guy forgot his wallet.”

For the next minute, Sara feels Leonard watching over her shoulder as she keeps her eyes trained on the other room. After extending their waiting time just a bit more for the sake of ensuring their cover, Sara twists the door handle and begins pushing it open slowly. 

She doesn’t get far, because just as Sara steps out of the storage room, a firm hand grabs her by the elbow, tugging her back towards Leonard as another arm wraps around her back, locking her into place. Before she knows what’s happening, their lips are already connected and she’s kissing him back. 

With the coldness and low humidity of the storage room, both their lips are dry, but they don’t care. The only thing that matters to Sara, is having her body pressed as close as she can against his, feeling his weight press down on her. 

Everything she’s felt, all this jealousy and regret for her actions, vanishes as she begins pushing against Leonard, making him take a step back further into the storage closet. Her hands finally squeeze through the tight gap between them and she cups his cheek with one hand and holds the back of his head with the other. 

God, she’s needed him for so long, and now she finally has him. 

She almost feels embarrassed that she audibly whines when Leonard pulls away, even more so when he grins at her. 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Canary,” his voice in her ear sends shivers down her spine, “We’re still in Nazi territory.”

It occurs to her that she had kind of forgotten that important detail during the kiss, realising how close she was to enacting all those lustful thoughts her mind had concocted, “Right,” she hums with her hands on her hips as she looks back to the door, “Not the most romantic place, is it?”

Leonard shrugs, “Blame the Nazis. All sorts of naughty stuff happen in storage closets,” he says with this devilish smirk while he grabs a pencil and snaps the tip in one quick motion.  
“Is that speaking from experience, crook?” Sara raises an intrigued eyebrow. 

“Just get that document so we can get out of here,” he drawls, playfully pushing her out the door.

XXX

In the quiet of the night on the Waverider, the only sound coming from Leonard’s room is the flow of water from the bathroom sink. Washing off the soap from his hands, the hairs on the back of his neck rise as a familiar sensation of someone’s presence comes from behind. 

Illumination is faint in his room, a single light further back on 10 percent power. Yet when he looks up at the mirror in front of him, Leonard can see Sara Lance standing behind him with her arms crossed over her chest, clear as day. Oh, and she’s completely naked. 

“Must you do that?” Leonard drawls with a half-smirk as he turns off the tap.  
Sara laughs heartily, while clothes form over her body in the blink of an eye, “Better?”

Leonard tilts his head to the side, giving him line of sight in the reflection of the mirror to the base of his bed, where the legs of the real Sara Lance are barely visible under the small light. She still seems asleep, which is probably a good thing, because an uneasy feeling is coming to with the presence of his visitor. 

“What do you want, you sentimental sap?” Leonard grunts as Sara’s form stalks up behind him and wraps its arms around his waist. 

As he’s used to, he knows the weight of the arms and body behind him are all simulated via synapses that his unwanted guest plays with inside his head. Even when he looks down, he can’t see their presence, yet they’re perfectly visible in the reflection of the glass. 

“I missed you,” fake Sara rests its chin on his shoulder, “Wanted to see how you’re doing. Or who, it seems now,” the pouty expression transitioning into a playful grin.

For a moment, Leonard smiles with it at the familiarity, but he knows there’s more to this visit, “You need my help.”

The softness of its smile is enough of an answer. 

“No,” Leonard shakes his head firmly, “No. I am not leaving them now. I just got the chance to start something with Sara. I don’t want to be the kind of person who has to keep walking away from them at your beck and call.”  
“It’s okay. Our arrangement no longer needs to work like that anymore,” it unwraps its arms from his waist and places one on his upper arm reassuringly, “A team is actually what I need from you. A few extra sets of hands will help this thing go smoothly. Bring them along.”

Leonard visible relaxes, the tension fading from his shoulders.

Sara walks back, snapping its fingers repeatedly as it exits his bathroom, “Come on. Wake them up. Let’s go.”  
“Nope,” once more, Leonard shakes his head in defiance, “I am going back to that bed, and I am going back to sleep.”  
Sara frown mischievously, “You sure sleep is what you’re after?”

A staring match begins between the two of them, narrowed eyes with hints of stubbornness and defiance. Technically, Sara could outlast him since it is just a figment of his mind, but still, it concedes with a surrendering gesture. 

“Fine,” it says, grossly exaggerating the look of misery on its face, as if such a terrible tragedy has occurred, “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“Good,” Leonard responds, turning around, placing his back to the mirror and staring into his room.

Sara’s form, as well as her real body on his bed, are visible at the same time when his mind adjusts. 

“It’s good seeing you again,” Leonard admits quietly.  
It smiles back warmly, “It’s a nice team you work with here. Maybe you could introduce me sometime?”  
“Gideon will love you,” he drawls with a sly grin.  
Its lips press into a firm line of consideration and intrigue, “You think so?”

Leonard shrugs in a non-committal manner, but his face still maintains the grin. He exits the bathroom and steps into the open floor of his quarters, coming to a stop near his guest. 

“I’ll let you back to that,” it casts a glance of amusement at Sara, “Night, Leonard.”  
Leonard rolls his eyes as he approaches the bed, “Good night.”

By the time Leonard slides under the covers, the illusionary brightness of the room is gone. Just himself and the real Sara beside him are the only occupants in the room. 

“Were you talking to someone?” Sara’s tired voice croaks beside him, arming stretching by her side.  
Leonard turns his head to look at her, “Someone who has a terrible sense of timing. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

Sara rolls over onto her stomach, an arm planting over Leonard’s bare chest, “It’s good to have you back.”  
Ever so gently, Leonard takes her hand in his and brings it to his lips where he places a soft kiss, “Good to be back.”


End file.
